I don't normally watch 60 Minutes, but tonight's episode was devoted to the Ritchie Boys of WW2. They were mainly Jewish Germans who were part of the US army. Many were immigrants to this country. They devoted their efforts to helping to defeat the Nazis. They infiltrated German units and reported their findings to American units. They compiled lists of German units, helped fuel the resistance, and joined the infantry when the Allies invaded during D--Day. After the war they helped hunt down, arrest, and convict high-ranking Nazis. Many continued their training in the OSS to become Nazi hunters and formed part of the background of the CIA. Many of their activities were classified until the 1990s because they were considered secret. I had never heard of them before. All in all, a worthwhile time well spent. Their story needs to be spread to more people.
Ritchie Boys were not OSS. They were part of MIS, the Military Intelligence Service and more unusually, the CIC, the Counter Intelligence Corps. They generally served in specialized intelligence teams, normally as order of battle specialists, photo interpreters, general intelligence personnel, but their real specialization was as PW interrogators. See John Patrick Finnegan, Military Intelligence, (Washington, D.C. Center of Military History, United States Army, 1998), pp. 61-63 and more generally, Bruce Henderson, The Ritchie Boys. Probably the best known Ritchie Boy was Henry Kissinger, who ended the war at Oberammergau (of Passion Play fame), questioning the staff at the nearby Me 262 and V-2 production sites hidden in tunnels. The NATO School is now at the Kaserne he was based at.
You're probably right. I don't know enough to dispute you. The interviewer said that some of them went to Ft. Ritchie to train with the OSS. It was part of the reason their activities were classified. In any case, their exploits deserve wider consideration. JD Salinger was also part of this unit.
Fort Ritchie, then Camp Ritchie, was the War Department Military Intelligence Training Center from spring 1942 to its inactivation in 1945, when the Training enter moved to Fort Holabird as the Army Intelligence School, which remained there until it transferred to Fort Huachuca in 1971, when Holabird was inactivated. Fort Ritchie did reopen as an Army Training Center postwar and remained affiliated with the intelligence community as an early Network Operations Center, but it was BRACed in 1998 and closed, with all its remaining functions transferred to Huachuca and NSA. The nearby Catoctin Mountain Park was the site of the OSS Training Center from spring 1942 to its inactivation in 1945. The two were nearby, but were actually separate bases, even though they did share some activities in training.
Sounds a bit like the German Jews recruited by the British into X Commando. I met one in 2007 at a Remembrance event at Canada House. He was in his early twenties at the end of the war and spent 1945-46 hunting down Nazi war criminals. He ended up a Law Lord.
